DSDP/RTSC

Welcome to the DSDP Real-Time Software Components (RTSC) Project Wiki. The RTSC project provides foundational tools and low-level runtime content to enable component-based development using the C language targeting all embedded platforms. While other component technologies exist for embedded systems, RTSC is unique in that it scales down to highly resource constrained embedded systems including DSPs and 16-bit micro-controllers.

Background

Although the RTSC project is currently in the incubation stage, the RTSC tools and component model (XDCtools) have enjoyed continuous development since 2000 by a small group of senior embedded software developers at Texas Instruments (in Santa Barbara). Since 2004, the DSP/BIOS 5.x RTOS – created using the XDCtools – has shipped along with these tools to ensure that any development system that included DSP/BIOS could consume components (called packages) created by other development groups. Today, internal groups within Texas Instruments regularly (re)build, test, and deploy hundreds of RTSC packages. Many of these packages are used worldwide by thousands of developers both inside and outside Texas Instruments. For example,

Codec Engine multi-media middleware runtime is an independently deployed bundle of more than 21 packages,

a wide variety of video, imaging, speech, and audio codecs – developed by both Texas Instruments and its third parties – are delivered as a packages, and

XDCtools itself is delivered as a bundle of over 125 packages.

The fact that developers have been using DSP/BIOS 5.x without realizing that it is, in fact, a collection of RTSC components illustrates one of the strengths of the RTSC model: consumers of RTSC components can easily integrate them without converting their entire application into components.

The starting point for the RTSC project will include the XDCtools currently available from Texas Instruments as a free download (may require a free registration). By making these tools freely and openly available, we hope to foster deeper levels of integration with the Eclipse platform, encourage adoption of RTSC by eliminating the understandable fears of proprietary ties to Texas Instruments, and bring modern component-based development tools to the embedded C programmer.